


like a gold rush

by Anonymous



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Delinquents, M/M, charbirth2021, mild violence, unneccessarily edgy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29516817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The greys and the whites, everyone knows these ugly colors stand for rich losers, and the blond kid driving down the street on a fancy new bike, well, he looks like the biggest loser of all.Even before the wordsThink it’s possible to hit him at this distance?leave Yugyeom's mouth, Jungkook knows he’s game.
Relationships: Choi Yeonjun/Jeon Jungkook
Kudos: 51
Collections: Anonymous





	like a gold rush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lowblow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowblow/gifts).



> happy birthday kia ur the only bastard in this godless world I'd write kpop rpf for

He meets Choi Yeonjun for the first time in the second spring of junior high.

It’s sort of an accident – well, if accident is synonymous with it’s most definitely not – because when he zooms in on the familiar school uniform in the distance, Jungkook simply cannot help himself.

The greys and the whites, everyone knows these ugly colors stand for rich losers, and the blond kid driving down the street on a fancy new bike, well, he looks like the biggest loser of all.

Even before the words _Think it’s possible to hit him at this distance?_ leave Yugyeom's mouth, Jungkook knows he’s game.

The basketball does a beautiful backspin in the air before it crashes right on the side of the kid’s face, sending him sprawling over the handles of his bike. The sound is like something out of a movie scene: gears screeching, metal clashing, ground thumping as he topples onto the pavement, and it’s probably the funniest thing Jungkook has ever seen in his life.

Yugyeom’s hysterical guffaws ring out on the courtyard like a preordained laugh track. The blond kid doesn’t take long to stagger back to his feet, and the expression on Namjoon’s face goes from mildly amused to pensive: the kid is clutching onto his arm at a funny angle, but what stains his glare is not pain.

It all happens very quickly, then.

In the time it takes for the kid to close the distance, to the moment where his shin connects with Jungkook’s side with a swift, determined kick, what Jungkook remembers feeling is first and foremost surprise; agony clouds his vision, knees slump onto the ground, and he’s pretty sure he can literally hear something crack.

In stupefied wonder, Jungkook watches the kid whirl around and limp back to his bike, where his face contorts in a grimace every time he tries to lift his hand.

 _I think you broke his arm_ , Jaehyun comments.

 _I think he broke my rib_ , Jungkook replies.

Somehow, he knows that it won’t be the last time.

He meets Yeonjun for the second time on the first day of high school.

It’s been almost two years, but that blond hair is recognizable all the way from across the assembly hall. Naturally, the possibility initially strikes Jungkook as impossible: for someone from a school of Yeonjun's alma mater to end up at a school like Jungkook's seems ridiculous at best, because calling it a school is in and of itself a joke.

Half the students wander off before the opening ceremonies finish, while the rest make a commendable effort at kicking off right underneath the faculty’s nose. From their previous encounter, Jungkook doesn’t expect the Blond Kid to look unnerved, but the blatant boredom on his face still catches Jungkook off guard.

The other first years bark with a strained edge while waiting for the slightest trigger to unleash their nerves, but an aura of indifference shields Blond Kid from their desperate abandon. Whether it’s mere disinterest or sheer arrogance, Jungkook cannot say; all he knows is that bearing witness to it somehow really, really pisses him off.

 _How many of these losers do you think you could beat up before the day is done_ , Mingyu asks him in passing, but Jungkook isn’t listening because he only wants to beat up one.

Afterwards, there’s no point in skulking around; the rooftop stretches on as a stage made for dramatic confrontations, horizon laid out like a postcard in a novelty store. The predictability of the scene might be sort of annoying, but not only is Jungkook terrible at being self-referential, he’s also entirely too lazy to care.

Of course he finds Blond Kid smoking by the heaters. Of course there’s a spark of recognition and surprise that dawns on that infuriatingly delicate face; it reminds Jungkook of the posters Jimin used to hang up on his walls before he traded idols for power, and it kind of annoys him even more.

People like this guy don’t belong in places like here.

People like Jungkook, and Yugyeom, and that weird girl with the knives in class C, they–– they belong in places like here; people who only operate in absolutes, operate in shades of grey, or don’t operate anything at all.

Maybe, this is why Jungkook asks before he leaps.

 _What I’m doing here?_ Blond Kid repeats, sounding unusually perplexed; his golden brows knit together in thought, before that familiar indifference sets upon his feigned smile.

_I guess I was bored. I guess I just wanted a challenge. I guess I just didn’t care._

Were he a smarter man, Jungkook might stop to think why these reasons annoy him with their superficial arrogance, as much as they undeniably parallel his own; might not mistake the sudden rush of energy for disdain, might not act on impulse, might still his hand.

Or he might not; because the speed at which Blond Kid counters his fist belies any element of surprise, reveals just the slightest trace of intensity underneath that bored facade, and sends them both staggering out of balance.

 _I don’t think,_ Jungkook says, something reminiscent bubbling up in the recesses of his chest, _That you can afford not to care._

(It probably shouldn’t make him feel so smug to catch the flash of uncertainty that seeps out onto the space between them, but the smoke dies on Blond Kid’s lips as his eyes widen with awe, and it feels like a beginning and an end.)

A dislocated shoulder, split lip, and a long gash on the side of his temple later, Jungkook cracks his shoulder blades back and tilts his head at the disheveled young man braced against the ground.

 _Guess I won’t make that modeling gig this weekend after all, huh,_ the guy says and spits out blood.

When he looks up at Jungkook he’s smiling.

Technically, Jungkook never loses.

He hangs onto this fact with subdued pride, even if gauging winners and losers seems awfully moot when he also goes home bruised each night, an aching constellation mapping his body like a fractured kiss.

Still, he’s always the last one standing; his lungs may scream in agony and craning his neck might feel like bending solid iron, but even when the simple act of wiping blood off the corner of his eye ransacks his entire body with shudders, Jungkook needs no-one to steady his hand.

No, Jungkook never loses.

But perhaps, it would be closer to the truth to say that this is only because Choi Yeonjun never gives up.

It’s not over yet, he says, time and time again, with a grin that unnerves and overwhelms Jungkook all at once; since the day on the rooftop, that smile sticks to Yeonjun’s lips like the wounds that spill over the side of his mouth.

This naïve energy is a stark contrast to the cockiness and downright manipulative charm that oozes out of Yeonjun at school, twisting other, far more gullible first years around his finger to bear the brunt of whichever hotshot takes issue with his pretty face; it’s obvious that the only thing keeping Yeonjun from actually being dangerous is the fact that he’s also not very smart.

 _You’re not very smart, either,_ Jaehyun points out one day, sitting in an abandoned clubroom during lunch, break, or any of the classes they’re skipping, _Why do you waste time on that guy when you could try taking on the school?_

 _Eh_ , Jungkook replies, and it’s difficult to communicate his reasons in words more elaborate than that; he understands Jaehyun’s frustration, but the two of them also stand in different leagues. Jungkook doesn’t suppose there’s anyone who could truly beat him at his game, but actual territorial domination takes leadership and effort; neither of these is something he has much ambition for, and most of the school already knows messing with him is far more trouble than it’s worth.

Yet no amount of self-preservation instinct or logic ever seems to keep Choi Yeonjun at bay. Every morning he shows up at the gates, sparkling with confidence, wearing the gauze on his arm and the contusions on his skin like the season’s newest accessory.

Jungkook doesn’t know what madness drives him on, any more than he understands what makes it so fun to pull Yeonjun back to his feet after knocking the shit out of him each afternoon; but when the cuts paint away the boredom on that face, when Yeonjun laughs through a set of teeth as bloody as his own, a part of Jungkook almost feels like he’s––

 _It’s cute that you’ve made a friend,_ Jimin says as the dark pieces of tapioca trickle down his straw one cloudy Wednesday later.

Jungkook kind of wants to tell him to fuck off, before he remembers that he also wants to live; you might take the boy out of the gang but you can’t take the gang out of the boy, and Park Jimin knows roughly eleven and a half different ways to kill a grown man.

 _We’re not friends_ , he settles for instead, and Jimin casts him a Look; his smile sweet like tangerines, eyes sharp like a switchblade, and it reminds Jungkook once more why people like him and Namjoon are the ones who made it out of this shithole of a life.

 _Congratulations_ , _then_ , he says, and the fondness in his voice is almost ominous. _You’ve just invented the world’s most drawn out form of foreplay._

It’s really just about delaying the inevitable, after that.

 _Were you waiting for me?_ Yeonjun asks him after school, tilting his head with an air of mischievous dare; Jungkook scrunches up his face, but it’s but a feeble attempt to pretend like it’s not also true.

Whether it matters that it is or not, well, that’s another question altogether.

The infuriating thing about Yeonjun is that it probably doesn’t matter either way.

There are moments Jungkook swears he can detect genuine frustration behind the way Yeonjun’s mouth curves in a childlike pout; but his honesty is as fluid as the balance of power in these halls, and Jungkook would be a fool not to notice.

(For months on end he has not lost once, but this does not mean he has truly ever won. The game isn’t over until one of them forfeits it, and Jungkook’s not sure if it’s possible to survive it with both his bones and heart intact.)

That afternoon, their beat is out of sync.

Or maybe it’s just him, his beat, caught on a haphazard thought as his knee catches Yeonjun by the stomach and sends him stumbling into a pile of empty cans; the sound reminds him of a movie scene, metal clashing, ground thumping, but it’s far from the funniest thing Jungkook has seen in his life.

He’s tired of this.

_Come on._

He reaches out a hand.

_I’ll show you how to fix yourself up._

The gesture is met with mild suspicion, but soon makes way for a strange kind of relief; relief morphs into curiosity, curiosity into expectancy, and their footsteps that echo in the desolate nurse’s office once more resound in sync.

_I bet you don’t know how to deal with contusions properly. I bet you never let anything heal. I bet–– you don’t even know the right way to bandage up your sides._

Jungkook’s fingertips burn on contact when he pushes up Yeonjun’s shirt; the flinch that reverberates under his touch might be a flinch, might be laughter, but doesn’t make Yeonjun pull away.

_You’re such a liar, Googie-hyung. That’s not how you tend to cracked ribs at all._

And Jungkook wants to tell him, then, that should Yeonjun use such a dumb ass nickname again, he’ll surely discover ways to clock him out on sight; wants to tell him that Yeonjun doesn’t know anything, because Jungkook’s been practicing this ever since the day Yeonjun first broke his ribs; but the truth is that it is a lie, that it’s nothing but a half-hearted attempt to give Yeonjun a moment to seize – which he does, beautifully, by grabbing Jungkook’s wrist and reaching out to yank his lips between his teeth.

He’s almost surprised to realize that it really doesn’t hurt any less.

None of it–– is any easier, because the urgency that sinks his fingers in the small of Yeonjun’s back scrapes on his nerves like a gash; the heaviness of the unwieldy kiss sucker punches the air out of his lungs; and maybe in a different world, both of them might be able to communicate their feelings with more than desperate cues and misplaced apathy, but––

––there’s a light in Yeonjun’s eyes that he knows he doesn’t simply imagine, and it soothes and tears open all of Jungkook’s half-healed wounds at once.

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably ooc as heck bc it's been 20 years since I've heard the name jungkook & I barely know what a yeonjun is but I hope you enjoyed anyway!! love you always <3


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